Carpool program axed, with little to show for it

SANTA CRUZ -- A regional pollution control agency has pulled the plug on a flailing carpool program overseen by Santa Cruz County transportation officials, after the program failed to catch on with commuters.

Awarded in 2009, the $120,000 grant was part of a statewide program that uses a vehicle registration tax for the lofty goal of reducing vehicle emissions. The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission vowed to use the program to link carpoolers through the Internet, but it ended with the grant largely unspent, a tiny handful of enrollees and unfulfilled promises.

"It's a pilot project. It's something we tried to make happen and for a variety of reasons it just wasn't successful," RTC Executive Director George Dondero said. "That's how you learn."

Just 51 new carpools were formed over the life of the program, with 27 people completing enough trips to qualify for a $25 gas reward. In a January letter axing the grant once and for all, the Monterey Bay Unified Air Pollution Control District noted that the RTC hadn't submitted any invoices since March 2012.

Dondero said there was interest in the program but that glitches hampered the rollout. A vendor stopped supporting planned software, and users seemed to find the enrollment process cumbersome, resulting in several thousand commuter miles saved instead of the millions promised. Dondero said the agency has continued to try to make it work beyond their last bill submitted.

"We're not going to invoice for that work," he said.

Having already been extended once, the award was due to expire in February with the RTC having spent just $33,000 of the $120,000 award. Air Pollution Control Officer Richard Stedman said his agency didn't want to let the project expire without taking action.

"I'm not really pleased that we took all this time and then found out we couldn't do it. We would have liked to have found out a couple years ago," Stedman said.

The Air Board also has asked for a meeting to go over RTC spending on the program, and the RTC has already responded with a letter though the two sides have not met in person.

"They may end up owing us some additional monies," Stedman said.

Despite the success elsewhere of Internet-based, urban ride-sharing programs such as Lyft and Uber, the failure of the program raises questions about county residents' willingness to change their commuting habits for the sake of the environment.

Paul McGrath, owner of local carpool business RideSpring, ran a fledgling carpool program through Cabrillo College that lost out to the RTC for the 2009 award. McGrath argues that carpools work if done right, and has been a zealot in his criticism of the RTC and the Air Board's handling of the grant.

"It's a lot easier to build on success than to kill success. They killed a successful program at Cabrillo," McGrath said. "Right from the start, this was a fabrication."